I’m hoping this post will make you want to support the Children’s Hospital, too.

I am the proud father of three beautiful little children, a four year old daughter and twin two year old boys. All three had a pretty rough start, each spending weeks in a hospital newborn intensive care unit (NICU). Of course we have a huge debt of gratitude to the doctors & nurses who provided their care, but also to the generous people who funded the facilities and research that made their care possible.

Our first encounter with a NICU came on January 2nd, 2004. My wife was 34 weeks pregnant when her water broke on New Year’s Eve. We had no indication that there was any reason to worry before that; in fact, my wife had just seen her doctor and everything was fine. My daughter was born late in the day on the 1st and we were told that she would probably be OK – 6 weeks premature is not considered extremely early and she was big (5 ½ lbs.) for her gestational age. The only clear problem was that her breathing was labored and difficult. As the night wore on, Lauren’s breathing problems were not getting better so the doctor recommended transporting her to the local NICU. One of my clearest memories from the night was that my first decision as a father was to sign the paper transferring her over to the hospital downtown. (more…)

Sometimes it seems that you cannot go a day without reading a story about the economic challenges faced by our country. On one day the headline news is the declining housing market, the next it is a debate about if we are or are not in a recession, and the next it is about the latest financial company that needs to be bailed out. But what does that mean if you are a search marketer?

I thought I would take a moment to give you a view on the pulse of the search marketing industry from a search marketing recruiter’s perspective. As a forewarning, this analysis involves no economic indices, advanced algorithms, or other quantitative analysis or statistics. What it does include however is a picture of the search marketing industry based on the view of those of us that are out there in the market talking to job seekers and hiring managers every day.

In the course of an average week my team and I speak to hundreds of internet marketing professionals and hiring managers. We speak on a number of topics: the economy, new SEO project initiatives, their family life, the previous night’s Olympics competitions, the latest news from Google, and more. What I am not hearing right now though is that job seekers are having a hard time finding work, or that companies have stopped hiring. My overall takeaways are very positive. The hiring managers we speak to are looking to hire SEM/SEO professionals, or they are fully staffed and as busy as can be. On the other side of the fence, right now any good search marketing candidate starting a job search is not likely to be on the market long. (more…)